[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 83 (Tuesday, June 23, 1998)]
[House]
[Pages H4967-H4968]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   SPENDING BY GOVERNMENT BUREAUCRATS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 21, 1997, the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Duncan) is 
recognized during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Speaker, the Washington Times reported last week that 
Carol Browner, head of the EPA, had led a junket to Paris at a cost of 
$60,000 to the American taxpayers. Of course, surely this was done to 
go to some very vital environmental meetings.
  Well, no. This trip was made so she and some of her friends could go 
to the World Cup soccer games, a $60,000 vacation at the expense of the 
taxpayers for Carol Browner, our environmental administrator. Five-
thousand-dollar first class round trip airfares, $300-a-night hotel 
rooms and then, of course, as is so often the case with this 
administration, they cannot take these fancy trips without big campaign 
contributors.
  One guest on this trip was Hassan Nemazee, an Iranian American. 
Hassan Nemazee has contributed at least $125,000 to the Democratic 
National Committee in recent years and no telling how much to 
individual Democratic candidates or other committees. Democratic fund-
raisers have now sold nights in the Lincoln bedroom, Commerce 
Department trips, even nuclear technology in return for campaign 
contributions. You have to wonder how much they will try to make out of 
the upcoming or the next Olympic games in Australia.
  On another and even more wasteful topic, a GAO report released last 
month said the cost of the space station has now gone up to $96 
billion, over five times the original cost estimates. Today the 
publication Congress Daily says, ``Recent reports from the GAO and the 
Cost Assessments and Validation Task Force on the space station have 
left even its biggest supporters acknowledging that problems with costs 
and Russian participation need to be addressed.''
  Also Congress Daily reports in the article today that the space 
station will likely be 2 years behind schedule, with each one month of 
delay costing $100 million. Congress Daily reports today that the space 
station will likely be 2 years behind schedule, with each month of 
delay costing $100 million for a program that is already over five 
times its original cost estimate.
  Each day, every day here in Washington we hear about horrible 
examples of waste, fraud and abuse.
  A few months ago it was reported that there was $23 billion, $23 
billion with a ``B,'' in waste and fraud in the Medicare program, $23 
billion. The entire State of Tennessee, our entire government in 
Tennessee does not spend that much in a year and a half for education 
and everything else that the State does. It does not spend as much

[[Page H4968]]

as the Medicare program has wasted in just one year.
  We recently were told about the National Park Service spending 
$584,000 per home to build 18 houses, 18 houses for its employees in 
the Yosemite National Park. One of these homes cost $700,000; $584,000 
for homes for employees of the National Park Service.
  It is amazing, Mr. Speaker, what Federal bureaucrats can justify or 
rationalize for themselves. The American people should realize that any 
money they send here to Washington to our Federal Government will be 
spent in the least economical, least efficient, most wasteful way 
possible. It is amazing, Mr. Speaker, what government officials and 
bureaucrats will do when they are spending other people's money.

                          ____________________